A LETTER FROM LONDON

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 128, 28 February 1928, Page 9

A LETTER FROM LONDON

TALK OF GENERAL ELECTION THIS YEAR

KEEN INTEREST IN COMING DAVIS CUP CONTESTS

Dominion Special Service.

London, January 5. The quiet, if busy, Parliamentary session of 1927 is reflected in the list of New Year honours. Apart from tire Usual batch of awards to comparatively obscure local politicians, politics occupy but a small part in the honours picture. Two of the three peerages conferred fall to political personages, but neither calls for particular remark. Colonel Gibbs, a most popular Whip, whose health of late has not been quite equal to his Parliamentary duties, goes naturally to the Upper House. Sir Gerald Strickland’s dual position as M.P. for Lancaster and Prime Minister of Malta has long been an anomaly—now disposed of in a manner, doubtless, satisfactory to all parties. Sir Frederick Lugard’s peerage is but the appropriate crowning of a distinguished career For the rest, so far as concerns Home politics, two members of the Commons become Privy Councillors, with the right to style themselves “Right Hon.,” and one other M.P. receives a knighthood. With the general election little more than a year ahead, it cannot be said that the Prime Minister, in Ins recommendations to His Majesty, has shown any haste to benefit his” political friends while the going is good. True, he may’ expect to advise on two more honours lists, even if he were put out of office at the next election—not a present probability. But one does not associate Mr. Baldwin with the spectacular, least of all in the conferment of personal benefits. Music, medicine, and •journalism provide what little seasoning there is in the present list, and it will be surprising if there are more than the customary end of-Parliament bestowals in subsequent awards. The General Election. Interest in politics is at a low ebb just now, only professional politicians spending time on speculation as _ to whether the general election—officially due before November, 1929—wi1l be sprung upon the country this year. The man in the street is much more concerned with the income tax, beer, tobacco, and other domestic prospects in next April’s Budget, and when these are out of the way he will turn his attention to the I current proposals for relaxing some of the wartime restrictions which still affect his daily I life. With the cost of British troops in China still mounting far. beyond I the original estimates and the uncertainty that must surround such out-! goings as those connected with the ex- i tended pensions scheme just brought i into force, there is no prospect that Mr. > Churchill could produce a Budget this j year so favourable to the taxpayer as | to make it worth while for the Min- i isterial party managers to press for a ' •'snap” election. Mr. Baldwin wishes ; to make his appeal to the country on | much broader grounds, and all the in- j dications are that the test will be taken . in the first half of 1929, by which time, , it is to be hoped, the strenuous Par- | liamentary year that is about to open i may have revived interest in the ballot box. The election, when it comes, will be more intensely fought than any. 1 of recent times. The Labour Opposi-1 tion has been working quietly in Par-1 liament, but intensively in the country. 1 ' fTlie Government cannot expect to re- • Ipeat its 200 majority, and with the ■ • Liberals trying to put" 500 spokes in the | Government wheel, the result of the > .election will be awaited with intense interest. The issues are of the gravest, character, and it is the Prime Minis- , ter’s realisation of this fact that must ■ militate against anything but a carefully prepared appeal to the electorate ' in due time. '

The Frozen South. 'After all it was an old-fashioned Christmas, the greater part of the country being buried in snow. Many people probably thought the photographs of snowdrifts in Kent and Surrey exagerated, but the contrary was the case. Those who had been over Bamford Edge and Win Hill, or up to the Snake Inn after heavy falls, had never seen such obstacles as beset their path from Woldingham eastward above the great Oxted chalk pits, and by Tatsfield_ and Westerhain Hill, to the lonely Kentish village of Cudham. A man over 70 years old, working with 20 others—old men labourers, boys, and "gentry”—all digging out a road, said he had never seen such drifts. “What will happen if this all melts in three hours?” he was asked. “We’ll be lucky,” he replied, "if it melts within three months 1” The first things to be seen on leaving the train at Woldingham Station were half-a-dozen pairs of skis left in the booking hall by people ,who had come on them to the station, and would resume them after returning from work in the city. A young American in horn spectacles and a "doughboy” cap coasted down the road right info the station yard, sitting atop of his suitcases, which were corded to a toboggan. On the hill-sides boys and 'girls were gliding or tumbling on skis. In fields where the snow had not drifted its depth was six to eight inches. The local milkman’s pony was dragging a big sheet of corrugated iron with crates tied on top, and each crate full of milk. Some houses had six feet of snow in the ’gardens, but there was always a way out to windwards, and even old people clambered homeward over the drifts, 'dragging their groceries and bread on little sledges. Back to Normal. After the snow, the floods and the Blush. In many parts near London hundreds of acres of meadow land are submerged and roads are impassable. Widespread floods were feared in the Thames (Valley if the heavy rain continued, but .there were reassuring reports of the river doing very well in its task of clearing away the melted snow. Local an- J thorities are to deal with problems as I

1 they arise, but the motoring associa- - lions declare that conditions generally f in the home counties are worse than s with the snowdrifts. Any number of - roads are eighteen inches deep in water. - The New Year, undoubtedly, made a s clean start, and in a few hours 3 in tne early morning all the , vestiges of the snows of 1927 were re- - moved by the drenching downpour, r after tens of thousands of people had I been startled out of their sleep by the < thunderous fall of miniature avar lanches. London came back to nor--1 mal before breakfast, for mud and slush 1 seem to be the normal condition in i recent years. New Year sales were - seriously affected, and there was many - a jam in the West End traffic. The : New Year always (ishers in a period i of social quiet in London. The lightest > distraction on New Year’s Day was the > annual dinner for the superannuated inmates of the Cracklewood Home of 1 1 Rest for Horses, and in spite of wet weather a good many young people were there to see the faithful old things enjoy the dainties provided. A sad feature of this affair to yearly visitors is the gradual thinning-out in the ranks of familiar friends, whom old age claims one by one in spite of the care lavished upon them. Revels took place in the Great Hall of London University, where the Country Dance ball proved a great success. As usual, great things have been planned for the Chelsea Arts Ball at the Albert Hall. This year’s mise-en-scene is “under the sea.” Clever brains and fingers will evolve a submarine illusion throughout the huge dance floor, and strange sea-beasts in procession and a pageant of Neptune are among the “stunts” got up by various schools of art. Hampstead Winter Sports. No section of the public will feel keener regret at the complete thaw than the alert men who have been doing exceedingly good business all the week on Parliament Hill Fields in letting toboggans out on hire. The fee was two shillings an hour, with a deposit, and though the latter condition may seem unusual it would not have been difficult for those who desired to take I advantage of the crowded snow slopes I quietly to disappear with their hired j winter sports requisites. It was inevitable that on the crowded slopes | many accidents should occur, and not a ' few of those who gaily hired toboggans i for an hour succeeded in smashing both • their “conveyances” and injuring themI selves well within the allotted time, j Nevertheless the recognised slogan of j the toboggan hawkers—“ Who wants a I fast one?” found ready listeners, and i the hawkers’ enterprise, while profit- ’ able to them.selves, enabled thousands .to enjoy manv hours of novel sport. I Skating on Whitestone Pond and skiing on. the neighbouring slopes have 1 been equally popular Hampstead diver- . sions, and it has been noticeable that I women have not only been present in j force, but have usually known how to i clothe themselves much more sensibly than the men. In their gaily-coloured jerseys and workmanlike knickers many of them would have done no discredit to a fashionable Swiss resort, but many of the men attempted to toboggan in heavy overcoats and mufflers. Such a garb for the purpose is far too heavy, and may be dangerous. A Costly Failure. In the next few weeks a new aircraftcarrier will be added to the fleet when H.M.S. Courageous is taken into commission. Courageous, and her sister ship Glorious, also in process of conversion for aircraft purposes, will have cost over £2,000,000, in addition to an original cost nearly as much in 1917. With H.M.S. Furious, made into an air-craft-carrier so long ago as 1918, the Navy will have some time in the coming year a remarkable squadron of floating aerodromes. The three ships were the late Lord Fisher’s last expression of his ideas about capital ship design. They were also the most beautiful ships ever built, or, to judge by Nelson and Rodney, the new battleships, ever likely to be built for the British Navy. Fisher believed that gunfire had outstripped protective armour once for all, and that the only protection a ship should have should be speed and ability to outrange an opponent. So these three ships of 22,480 tons sacrificed everything to attain a speed of 31 knots, and carried four 15-inch guns. The Navy did not know how to classify them, so called them “large light cruisers.” Through no fault of Lord Fisher they were a failure. The hull structures, lightened at every point for speed, were not sufficiently rigid to stand the concussion of a broadside, and when the four turret guns fired the turbine engines stripped their blades. Alter unavailing efforts to stiffen the hulls, all three shins have been deprived of their heavy armament and turned into beasts of burden for the Royal Air Force fleet air arm.

British National Opera.

Upon the successful development of Sir Thomas Beecham’s Imperial League of Opera scheme would seem to depend the continued existence of the British National Opera Company, whose annual general meeting was held at the Roval Society of Arts. Air. Paget Bowman, business manager, in defining the position of the company in relation to the league, said it had been definitely laid down that the league would coordiate its work with that of the company, or, in other words, the 8.N.0.C. would “provide the nucleus of the first company to be subsidised by the league.” He added, however, that the procedure to be adopted was not and could not yet be decided, pointing out that the league will not have powers to put the company on to a profit-sharing or dividend declaring basis. He impressed upon the meeting that without the league or some such subsidy as it will furnish the 8.N.0.C. must come to an end before long. Their spring touthad been undertaken in the teeth of desperate risk, and in the hope that Sir Thomas’s scheme might be firmly established. If this failed, or if the British Broadcasting Company, which had given them sympathetic consideration, promised no further help, the summer would present an insoluble problem. Unpaid salaries of the managing directors, staff, and members of the company are shown on the balancesheet to stand at nearly £3OOO. The difficulties of the past season were mentioned by Mr. Bowman. Poor receipts were encountered, apart from good weeks in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. In the discussion which followed a suggestion was made that the company might tour more in smaller towns, but Mr. Frederic Austin replied that they stood for a certain bpe of performance only, and that though they might “scrape a living” by touring the provinces with a reduced personnel, such a policy would be in complete disharmony with the spirit of the 8.N.0.C.